Rittman, Ohio Ghost SightingsPAGE 2

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from the basement area forced me to open the door and peer down inside. Distinctly, I heard the phrase, ''just a matter of time,'' come from the darkened and empty basement. Shaking my head, thinking I was ''over tired'' from the physical move, I laughed and closed the door to return to bed. As I turned around, I felt a sharp chill on the back of my neck-- a chill that stopped me dead in my tracks.About a week later, I came in from working at Morton Salt, to find my wife as mad as a hornet. When I asked her what was wrong, she told me that our youngest daughter was ''playing'' with some strange old man in the backyard. She said by the time she put her shoes on, the man was gone, but a huge

bruise was on our daughter's wrist. When I looked at my daughter, sure enough, there was a deep black bruise. I asked who was her ''friend'' that mommy saw her playing with, she said, ''the man that lives in our basement, he wants me to visit him sometime when mommy's not home''.Boiling with anger, I stormed to our basement , opened the door and

went down to look over things further. Was there something I missed? Could there be someone living in our freaking basement? A million thoughts ran through my head and when I looked around, there was nothing or no one down there.Days went by, weeks, eventually a month. All the while, these strange things we were experiencing were getting worse, eventually reaching its peak when the whole house filled with a rotting odor. Like dry and dusty, rancid meat. It was coming from our twins' room. By this point, our kids wouldn't sleep in there because ''the basement man'' would lay on the ceiling and point at them while making scary faces in the dark. They resorted to sleeping in our room at the